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Holy Rule for Jan. 22

+PAX Continued prayers, please, for Martin, as he recovers from his knee replacement surgery. Say a prayer, please for me, on the 54th anniversary of my

Message 1 of 143
, Jan 21, 2013

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Continued prayers, please, for Martin, as he recovers from his knee replacement surgery.

Say a prayer, please for me, on the 54th
anniversary of my Confirmation and for my Dad, Jerome, whose name I took first
in that Sacrament.

Lord, help us all as You know and will. God's will is best. All is mercy and
grace. God is never absent, praise Him! Thanks so much. JL

January 22, May 23, September 22
Chapter 5: On Obedience

The first degree of humility is obedience without delay.
This is the virtue of those
who hold nothing dearer to them than Christ;
who, because of the holy service they have professed,
and the fear of hell,
and the glory of life everlasting,
as soon as anything has been ordered by the Superior,
receive it as a divine command
and cannot suffer any delay in executing it.
Of these the Lord says,
"As soon as he heard, he obeyed Me" (Ps. 17:45).
And again to teachers He says,
"He who hears you, hears Me" (Luke 10:16).

Such as these, therefore,
immediately leaving their own affairs
and forsaking their own will,
dropping the work they were engaged on
and leaving it unfinished,
with the ready step of obedience
follow up with their deeds the voice of him who commands.
And so as it were at the same moment
the master's command is given
and the disciple's work is completed,
the two things being speedily accomplished together
in the swiftness of the fear of God
by those who are moved
with the desire of attaining life everlasting.
That desire is their motive for choosing the narrow way,
of which the Lord says,
"Narrow is the way that leads to life" (Matt. 7:14),
so that,
not living according to their own choice
nor obeying their own desires and pleasures
but walking by another's judgment and command,
they dwell in monasteries and desire to have an Abbot over them.
Assuredly such as these are living up to that maxim of the Lord
in which He says,
"I have come not to do My own will,
but the will of Him who sent Me" (John 6:38).

REFLECTION

Ever wonder what was so great about obedience? What is so hot about
dumping our own wills? Sometimes our wills are innocent, sometimes they're even
downright good. Let's be truthful, sometimes our own wills seem even
BETTER than the choices presented to us by other circumstances. What
gives?

Good rhetorical question, that one: what GIVES. Genuine obedience is
a gift, to God and to all His people. Make the monastic better and
you have made the home or monastery better, and so the neighborhood,
the city, the state and onwards to the whole world. We forget the
ripple effect, because we cannot clearly see it. We are not giving
that gift to falsehood, but to truth. If we look at particle physics, it is
very true that what we do with our hearts really DOES affect the whole
universe.

Our self-gift of obedience heightens truth in the world, and Jesus
is the Truth. There is a very incarnational aspect of obedience. Like
Mary, we are, in our own halt and lame, partial ways, birthing God.
In our actions Christ today can become visibly human in us, in our
tiniest drop of fresh water, the sea becomes less salty, the desert,
less dry. No one can make the Sahara a rain forest alone, and God
knows that, but He wants us to try, to be part of the solution, not
the problem. Enough drops together WOULD make the Sahara bloom.

Obedience and humility are conjoined twins which share one heart:
both will die if they are separated. Humility, in its healthiest
perfection, is truth and that truth births bits of God into the
world, confetti mosaics that the wind of the Spirit can blow into
fuller, more accurate portraits. Yes, humility is the most often
mentioned of connections, but the root of humility is truth and the
root of truth is God. Obedience without humility would be no
better than a Nazi lockstep.

All of us spend large portions of our lives carefully building a
false self, who lives in a false world, with matching false
imperatives. Merton speaks of this false self again and again. The
goal of monastic struggle is to uncover and nurture the TRUE self,
the true world view and values. We often cheerfully ignore the real
imperatives of God and life, substituting our own and elevating them
to a level they truthfully (literally!) do not deserve. It's a moral
displacement activity. We fail altogether in one area, so we
compensate by raising another. Trouble is, the other one raised is
so often false, or made false by its unjust elevation. Sigh...
It becomes a vicious circle.

Give a good parent a critically ill child and you will find out
what's true or important in a hurry. Everything gets dropped at once,
without hesitation or care. Everything. Give a single person a really
bad case of the flu and you will soon find imperatives pared to very
few. (The flu or any illness is a superlative teacher: if it doesn't
matter when you're that sick, it often doesn't matter, period!)

See what obedience points us toward? Obedience says: here is Jesus, the
Truth. Embrace Him now, don't wait for the threatened child or the
ghastly flu to scare you into appropriate action. The Truth Whom
we only sometimes see in crisis is here all along. Keep what you have learned
from crisis. Live it all the time. Make it a gift, because it is one
that will enrich others AND yourself!

+PAX Prayers, please, for the following, and for all their families and all who take care of them: Barbara, dementia worsening, major meltdown on Friday, and

Message 143 of 143
, Jun 1, 2013

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Prayers, please, for the following, and for all their families and all who take care of them:

Barbara, dementia worsening, major meltdown on Friday, and for her husband, Jim.

a member of Jane's family newly diagnosed with cancer.

Al. His vision is critical to his work. He had cataract surgery and now the lens that was implanted will have to be removed Monday and replaced with a new one. Doc says there is a high risk of a detached retina. Please pray that God will guide the surgeon's hands and for complete healing.

Denise, that she get her marriage blessed and return to the Sacraments.

Lord, help us all as You know and will. God's will is best. All is mercy and
grace. God is never absent, praise Him! Thanks so much. JL

February 1, June 2, October 2
Chapter 7: On Humility

The fourth degree of humility
is that he hold fast to patience with a silent mind
when in this obedience he meets with difficulties
and contradictions
and even any kind of injustice,
enduring all without growing weary or running away.
For the Scripture says,
"The one who perseveres to the end,
is the one who shall be saved" (Matt. 10:22);
and again
"Let your heart take courage, and wait for the Lord" (Ps. 26:14)!

And to show how those who are faithful
ought to endure all things, however contrary, for the Lord,
the Scripture says in the person of the suffering,
"For Your sake we are put to death all the day long;
we are considered as sheep marked for slaughter" (Ps. 43:22; Rom.
8:36).
Then, secure in their hope of a divine recompense,
they go on with joy to declare,
"But in all these trials we conquer,
through Him who has granted us His love" (Rom. 8:37).
Again, in another place the Scripture says,
"You have tested us, O God;
You have tried us a silver is tried, by fire;
You have brought us into a snare;
You have laid afflictions on our back" (Matt. 5:39-41).
And to show that we ought to be under a Superior,
it goes on to say,
"You have set men over our heads" (Ps. 65:12).

Moreover, by their patience
those faithful ones fulfill the Lord's command
in adversities and injuries:
when struck on one cheek, they offer the other;
when deprived of their tunic, they surrender also their cloak;
when forced to go a mile, they go two;
with the Apostle Paul they bear with false brethren (2 Cor. 11:26)
and bless those who curse them (1 Cor. 4:12).

REFLECTION

Be careful how you read this fourth step of patience. It is an ideal,
presented in its most flawless form. It is not an unreachable goal, but neither
should we expect significant progress before noon today. It is our call and
our vocation, but it is a lifelong task.

The danger for schleps like me is that this step can give one an image
of a perfect, 1950's TV sitcom Mom: shirt dress, high heels and pearls as
everyday wear, cookies and milk always forthcoming in a kitchen as clean
as a surgical suite and never a hair out of place. Full make-up on rising
and wears hat and matching gloves to shop. PUHLEEEZE! Give me a break.
Real patience in action is not at all like that.

Patience in action is a fierce struggle. Never think that it's easy for
others and therefore something is wrong with you: it isn't easy
for anyone. One of the biggest flaws of the "I'm OK and you are
not..." school of ministry is that it makes people think exactly
this. "It's easy for her and there's something terribly wrong with
me." Neither is true.

The Rule and Scriptures were meant for strugglers. They were written
for real, average people, halt and lame, battle-scarred veterans like
you and me, for people who have weathered life, but barely. Hey,
there may be cookies and milk, but you'll probably have to get the
plate yourself and brush aside a LOT of blood, sweat and tears to
find one. Oh, and please drink the milk fast and take as much as you
can... the fridge broke today.

Patience is surely one of the most important fuels that perseverance
runs on, but don't be surprised if it often is not very high octane!
Neither should it surprise you if your engine is not a slant V-8, but
rather a very cheap lawnmower that has trouble starting. Patience
is ENDURANCE, not ease. It may, after years of struggle, confer a
great peace and serenity, but it rarely, if ever, feels like that in
the middle of things.

Brother Patrick Creamer, OSB, of Saint Leo Abbey in Florida, taught
me patience and perseverance. He was able to do so because he was so
transparent about his own struggles. Many others tried to tell me how
hard it was, but their lack of candor made me dismiss their warnings
as tokenism. It certainly didn't seem to be hard for them. I couldn't
believe them. Patrick, my late and beloved mentor, was so very different.

Patrick entered the monastery in 1954, when he was 40, after a long
career at sea. He missed being at sea so much (and for so long!) that
it magnified many of the every day crosses of monastic life. Abbot
Marion, who loved brothers and had a very tender spot for them, used
to send Patrick to the beach for a weekend occasionally, in years
when that sort of thing didn't often happen. Abbot Marion was wise enough
to know he'd lose Patrick if he didn't get a salt air fix now and then.

Even the beach trips were not enough alone. Patrick told me he was
tempted to leave every single day for ten years. Patrick, when I
lived with him, literally stayed packed with a hidden suitcase for
years and boasted of his ability to be gone in an hour. As a novice,
my heart used to be selfishly in my throat. I wanted him to go, if
that was what he was supposed to do, but I really didn't want to lose
him.

I can also tell you that, during the worst
of those years, Patrick helped scores of folks who came to him, because a
transparently wounded person usually can. I can also tell you that
Brother Patrick finally decided to stay: when he was 83 or so!! What a
witness of hope that was to me, to others struggling like me.

Please, let us all be given patience. But when we get it, however
little at a time, let NONE of us be "perfect" TV Moms. Let us all be Patricks,
let us show others how terribly hard, yet doable it can be.

Patrick held forth from his infirmary room until his death
at two weeks short of 90. A steady stream of visitors never waned.
On the head of his bed and on the shaving mirror over his sink were
two small notes, written in his own inimitable hand: "Lord, let me
come to You." They broke my heart the first time I saw them. I still
didn't want to lose him. But I know how right he was and how richly he
deserves that loving embrace for which he so patiently waited.